I got to see him in 1980, when “The River” had just come out. He talks to his audience quite a bit, and in this instance Clarence Clemens and … fuck it, the drummer … got into this cacophonous rhythm that was absolutely unbearable. Some one or the other had screwed up, and they wouldn’t get in sink with each other. And Bruce just kept talking.

And when he finished his riff, he came in on a third point that unified the other two in an impossible whole. Hands down the god damnedest thing I’ve ever been personally witness to. The song, of course, was Factory.

This one goes out to my cousin John, driver of the Australian road trains, worked on the Pilbara as a station mechanic on the big rigs on a cattle station, the kind of man you wanted on your side of the dark alleyway….. died last week in an industrial accident when his truck fell on him as he was working on it.